Russell T. Davies – Nerdisthttp://nerdist.com
Thu, 22 Feb 2018 02:36:08 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4DOCTOR WHO’s Christmas Specials, Rankedhttp://nerdist.com/doctor-who-christmas-specials-ranked/
Tue, 12 Dec 2017 16:30:04 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=558828It will never stop blowing my mind that we’ve had 10 seasons of Doctor Who since its revival in 2005. But whether it’s been a year since a full series or not, Doctor Who has been very consistent when it comes to Christmas specials—never missing one. This year’s “Twice Upon a Time” will be the 13th such special (bananas), and I thought it’d be fun (and argument causing) to rank the twelve we’ve had thus far. We’re gonna count ’em down Casey Kasem style, from 12 all the way to 1. Like a countdown. Allons-y!

12. “The End of Time Part 1”

No matter how many years removed we are, I’ll still never get over how disappointing David Tennant‘s final two-part story was to me. And before we get too far—I love David Tennant’s portrayal of the Doctor. But during the year leading up to his regeneration (which saw only five episodes spread over 53 weeks), the Tenth Doctor became increasingly arrogant, po-faced, and just downright irritating. (Not to mention writing that was an unholy blending of silly and super-serious.) “The End of Time part 1” gave us a frothing Master with super powers we didn’t know he had, a Doctor who spends most of his time looking like someone pooped in his shoes, and it all ended with everyone turning into the Master because of reasons. The only good scene (and it is very good) is a tearful moment about impending mortality between the Doctor and Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins). But one scene does not a good episode make.

11. “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”

I almost fell asleep typing the name of this episode. What a snore. A Christmas episode certainly ought to have whimsy, which “Doctor/Widow/Wardrobe” certainly had (the Doctor showing the Arwell family their Christmas digs was a delight), but whimsy soon gave way to rampant and unfettered sentimentality, which rang very false to me for some reason. It also didn’t help that the plot had one of those “Love Conquers All” denouements that are only really effective in rare instances, and a big waste of a reference to “The Caves of Androzani.” The carved Christmas tree people were in this one. Hmm.

10. “The Return of Doctor Mysterio”

If there’s one thing I will give any writer credit for, it’s doing something different, and introducing legitimate, costumed, comic book superheroes into the continuity of Doctor Who is certainly something different. And while the romantic comedy angle was cute enough, and bringing on Matt Lucas’ Nardole as an official companion with this episode was a great move, for me, after an entire calendar year with no Doctor Who, it just seemed so slight and inconsequential, especially coming off of some of the series’ best episodes. But, Peter Capaldi is so very good in it, and his monologue about things ending being sad is still one of my favorites.

9. “The Next Doctor”

About 45% of this is a very good episode. Unfortunately, 55% of it is incredibly stupid and for that reason, I’m out. The public knew the Tenth Doctor’s days were numbered, so a special called “The Next Doctor” seemed like a very exciting prospect. And David Morrissey as someone who seemed like an amnesiac future incarnation of the Doctor stuck in Victorian times was a brilliant idea, and then the reveal that he’s actually just a human with brainwaves from the real Doctor was another nice stroke from Russell T. Davies. But for God’s sake, a giant Cyberman wreaking havoc across London…so, so dumb. And it never overcomes such a stupid plot device. The following full season had to canonically retcon that garbage.

8. “Voyage of the Damned”

Heart and cheesiness I can take in heaping spoonfuls, especially at Christmas, but my tolerance for hokum is aggressively low, and “Voyage of the Damned” is almost nothing but. A pretty great set-up in an interstellar disaster movie, evoking things like The Poseidon Adventure and of course Titanic quickly gives way to some pretty eye-rolling moments. This episode ends up being fairly high on my list, however, because of sheer nostalgia, being one of the handful of episodes (all from series 4) that I had on my iPod and would watch on repeat on my lunch breaks at work. It’s very stupid, but it still kinda gives me the warm fuzzies.

7. “The Time of the Doctor”

How do you follow something as joyous and brilliant as “The Day of the Doctor?” Not only that, how do you use that episode to say farewell to a beloved Doctor who also happens to be that particular showrunner’s first? Well, it turns out you can’t do it super well. While a good portion of the character development hit with me—including the Doctor being forced to stay put for hundreds and hundreds of years—there was so much attempt to answer each and every dangling plot thread of the Eleventh Doctor’s era that none of them were all that satisfying. But the performances by Smith and Coleman are wonderful and it was a fairly fitting farewell, it just didn’t hang together ultimately.

6. “The Runaway Bride”

There’s a certain strain of these Christmas specials that is in no way Christmasy at all. “Doctor Mysterio” is one for sure, another is the very second one ever, “Runaway Bride.” After the gut-punch of a season ender that was “Doomsday,” the cliffhanger of a bride (Donna Noble, we’d find out later) suddenly being in the TARDIS was particularly jarring. But aside from some evil robo snowmen, the most jarring thing was how clearly un-December the special was. That notwithstanding, I rather enjoy this episode, because it gave us our first team up of Tennant and Catherine Tate and it showed us the first hint that the Tenth Doctor had a real streak of darkness in him. So, you know, fun for the holidays.

5. “The Husbands of River Song”

Now River Song has always been a problematic character for her constant “I know something you don’t know” attitude and unclear relationship to the Doctor (like, I get that they’re married, but what does that mean?), but following only a few weeks after the end of series 9—in which we saw the Doctor say goodbye to Clara Oswald—the show gave us a lovely and sad farewell to River, in a story that was mostly exceedingly goofy. Somehow, seeing surly Capaldi put into these ridiculous plots makes them all the funnier.

4. “The Snowmen”

Series 7 was a particularly weird one, split between two calendar years with a hefty break in the middle, and even different companions from one half to the next. “The Snowmen” is the bridge between Sad Eleven’s hiding after losing Amy (and to a lesser extent Rory) and his tenure with Clara. It introduced us to Victorian-era Clara (who, let’s face it, probably should have stayed the companion) as well as the ultimate villain—the Great Intelligence. And, not for nothing, but it was a pretty darn scary with the snowmen full of teeth and stuff. And hey, Paternoster Gang is never a bad thing in my book.

3. “The Christmas Invasion”

This is the one that started it all. Of the many genius things Russell T. Davies did in bringing back Doctor Who, establishing the Christmas special as a yearly, necessary, and obligatory tradition was right near the top of my list. And what a way to do it. Following the surprise (to people who didn’t read news or message boards) one-and-done regeneration of Christopher Eccleston in series 1, rather than waiting for a whole new series to let the characters deal with David Tennant suddenly being the guy, Davies gave Rose Tyler and co an episode—and a very Christmassy one at that—to come to grips, and for the Tenth Doctor to make his triumphant, pajama-clad debut.

2. “Last Christmas”

Series 8 was a departure in a lot of ways, both for Doctor Who and for Steven Moffat as showrunner. He made the entire year about a fraught and codependent relationship between Clara Oswald and the newly cranky Doctor, and it ended with the pair of them lying to each other about being happy on their own. Then we had “Last Christmas” which not only brought the pair back together but also gave us a riff on everything from Inception to Alien. It’s genuinely good sci-fi storytelling, and keeps the audience guessing, and it’s sort of brave to do that in a Christmas special. And it also had Nick Frost as Santa Claus, just to be awesome.

1. “A Christmas Carol”

Just as series 5 was Steven Moffat crafting a nearly perfect first season, his first Christmas special remains his best, and the best Doctor Who‘s ever had. A decidedly somber sci-fi riff on the Charles Dickens novel, with Michael Gambon playing a crotchety old miser who’d sooner let a spaceliner full of people die than do anything for free. Gotta love time travel, because the Doctor—blatantly shirking responsibility, really—infiltrates the past of the man, at Christmas every year, to turn his hard heart soft. It’s truly lovely, and one worth watching every year.

And there you have it. This is, of course, my list, but you no doubt have your own. Share your ranking of Doctor Who Christmas specials in the comments below!

More Doctor Who for you!

]]>DOCTOR WHO Gets New Cast Members to Accompany Jodie Whittaker’s Doctorhttp://nerdist.com/doctor-who-season-11-new-cast-male-companion/
Mon, 23 Oct 2017 00:00:59 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=551115When Matt Smith took over the role of The Doctor from David Tennant, the series was given a complete overhaul, with a new TARDIS and a new supporting cast. History has repeated itself as BBC America has announced three new cast members that will be joining the Jodie Whittaker‘s Thirteenth Doctor when season 11 of Doctor Whopremieres in fall of 2018.

From left to right are Mandip Gill as Yasmin, Bradley Walsh as Graham, Whittaker as the Doctor, and Tosin Cole as Ryan. Actress Sharon D. Clarke will also be joining the series in a recurring role. BBC’s announcement carefully steps around using the word companion, but rumors have been swirling that Walsh’s Graham will be in the companion role. But, as Gill, Graham, and Cole are all joining in series regulars roles, maybe this Doctor will travel with a small entourage.

These are not the only big changes in store for the new season. It will have just 10 installments instead of the usual 12, but each episode will have a longer run time of 50 minutes, with the season premiere being a full hour.

New showrunner Chris Chibnall is definitely doing his best to make this version of Doctor Who his own, succeeding Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat. From the first female Doctor to a diverse cast of friends, Chibnall seems to be making sure the Doctor is accessible to anyone who may be watching. So, with a new Doctor and new friends, what other new things can we expect? Will we get the debut of a new iconic villain like the Weeping Angels? Or will we see Whittaker face off against old favorites like the Daleks? We shall find out in about a year’s time.

Are you excited for the new adventures of Doctor Who? Will you be tearing up this Christmas when Peter Capaldi hands the reins over to Whittaker? Let me know on Twitter @donnielederer or make your voice heard in the comments below.

Images: BBC/BBC America

Time travel with more Doctor Who stories!

]]>10 DOCTOR WHO Stories for 10 Years of the Tenth Doctorhttp://nerdist.com/10-doctor-who-stories-for-10-years-of-the-tenth-doctor/
Fri, 29 Apr 2016 16:00:17 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=395926It seems almost impossible to fathom, but it’s been over 10 years since David Tennant began his run as the Tenth Doctor on Doctor Who. At Christmas time 2005, Tennant donned the pajamas and bathrobe and sword fought with his fightin’ hand to the delight of fans everywhere. He’s been out of the role for six years now and yet the popularity of both him and his era remain stronger than ever. The striped suits, ratty trainers, long brown coat, spectacles, and especially that hair have become icons to cosplayers everywhere.

When I started watching the show, I thought there was no way someone could overshadow Christopher Eccleston for me but it literally took one episode to make me a Tennant fan for just about the entirety of his whole run (we won’t talk too much about “The End of Time”… in fact, that’s it.) To celebrate ten years of the Tenth Doctor, I’ve compiled a list of my ten favorite Tennant stories. They’re in chronological order and unranked, so don’t yell at me.

Also DISCLAIMER: I’m not going to include “Blink” on this list. Yes, it’s a brilliant episode; yes, it’s one of the best ever. But a) it always gets talked about, and 2) the Tenth Doctor is a supporting character in it so why not focus on ones where he takes center stage?

School Reunion
While I was all about the Tenth Doctor with the first episode, it wasn’t until “School Reunion” when a whole new world of Doctor Who opened up. Elisabeth Sladen returned as Sarah Jane Smith, the most beloved companion of the classic series, for an episode which explored the idea of what happens after companions stop traveling with the Doctor. Would they stop caring about aliens and stuff altogether? In Sarah Jane’s case, no; she continued to search for and report the paranormal. And Tennant–a confirmed old-school fanboy–getting to share scenes with her is truly a joy to watch. This episode went over so well that it led to the spinoff series The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The Girl in the Fireplace
While I don’t think this episode fits very well within the season, “The Girl in the Fireplace” is a bang-up awesome standalone adventure. The first Steven Moffat script in the Tennant era, it mixes everything the future showrunner would covet: history, children waiting for frigging ever to become adults, weird time jumps, fears of monsters, and pretending the Doctor is drunk. Even if it ultimately doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for the Doctor and Madame du Pompadour to have that kind of relationship, the fact that he isn’t there, and she has to take the slow path, is very Doctory.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit
Tennant’s first season was a mostly lighthearted, or at least generally happy, affair — even the Cybermen returning in a parallel dimension didn’t truly frighten. But toward the end of series 2, we got a pair of episodes that might still be among the scariest the show’s ever done. “The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit” took the Doctor and Rose Tyler to a base at the edge of a black hole, where a crew is slowly overtaken by a demonic presence, possibly even the Devil himself. This story also introduced the Ood, and made them VERY creepy, even if they went on to be weird spiritual beings.

The Shakespeare Code
Some people give this episode shade, but I won’t hear of it. As a big Shakespeare nut myself, the script by Gareth Roberts is full of all sorts of great references to famous plays, and in-jokes about Shakespeare lore. Whatever became of Love’s Labours Won? Maybe some dank alien harpies done stole it. I also love that Shakespeare is too clever to be taken in by the psychic paper, and that they filmed in the actual Globe Theater in London. It’s just a really fun episode. The only thing I don’t like about it is the Martha Jones pining-over-the-Doctor sesh that begins in earnest here.

Human Nature/The Family of Blood
Now, the Tenth Doctor isn’t actually in this one very much, but David Tennant sure is and he’s amazing. Hiding his Time Lordiness in a fob watch, he hides from an evil alien clan and lives as a regular human named John Smith, a school teacher on the brink of WWI. Martha, stuck as a maid, is the only one who knows the truth, the custodian of his true identity. The episode is great for contrasting the kind but pitiless Doctor with the decidedly un-heroic but wholly sympathetic John Smith, who is forced to give up a whole life and love in order to save the world. Stupid responsibility.

Utopia
Even though the two episodes that conclude this storyline range from “not so great” to “poop on a stick,” this episode is nothing short of brilliant, bringing back Captain Jack Harkness post-immortality-making and forcing the Doctor to deal with essentially abandoning him. We’re also taken to the very edge of the universe and shown a version of the Doctor’s arch-nemesis the Master, who has also hidden from the world in the guise of a kindly old man. It ends on one of the best cliffhangers of all time, and I super wish the following two episodes had lived up to this one. It’s great.

The Fires of Pompeii
I have to admit something: I wasn’t sure I was going to like Donna Noble (as played by Catherine Tate) when she became the full time companion. Just something about the character rubbed me the wrong way. But after “The Fires of Pompeii,” I was sold and she became my favorite. This is another wonderful example of the Doctor having to make tough decisions pertaining to fixed points in time and whether or not to save people. He can’t divert the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, nor all the people that die because of it, but it’s Donna’s sense of right and wrong, and her compassion, that leads him to save one family–who so happens to look like a couple of Doctor faces later.

Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead
This is a story that I liked at the time but it has gone way, way up in my estimation in the years hence. While the second half with Donna “saved” in the matrix with a new set of memories gets a bit tedious, the mixture of creepy shadow aliens, walking skeleton corpses in spacesuits, and the introduction of River Song really make for great entertainment. And Tennant is brilliant in these episodes, his skepticism about River inches steadily into the realization that she really does know a lot about him.

Midnight
No two ways about it, this is my very favorite Tenth Doctor story of the whole bunch. It’s basically his whole personality in one contained–one room–story. It plays like a stage production, with the small group of characters all dealing with each other and this terrifying unknown and inexplicable alien presence. The Doctor starts out his usual exuberant, chatty self, starts in on his arrogant “because I’m clever” diatribe when things get weird, and get summarily dismissed and even persecuted by the others when the entity decides to make him seem the evil one. It’s a rough 45 minutes, and certainly not uplifting, but it’s so stinking good. And, famously, Russell T. Davies was forced to churn out the script in a weekend, and it was the best thing he ever wrote.

The Waters of Mars
Finally, I’m gonna throw some love to what is, in my humble opinion, the only good episode from the gap year specials. It’s also really damn dark and doesn’t paint the Tenth Doctor in the best light, but it does show a different side to both the character and to Tennant in the role. This is a similar dilemma that he faces in “The Fires of Pompeii,” but without Donna or another companion to keep him honest, he goes way off the rails, calling himself not the survivor of the Time War, but the WINNER of the Time War, which–to him–gives him the right to completely shirk the rules of time. It blows up in his face and leads to his eventual downfall. But despite the sadness, I still love it.

So there we have my ten favorite Doctor Who stories with the Tenth Doctor for his 10th anniversary. Everybody’s got opinions, I’m sure, so be sure to tell me all of your choices in the comments below! And send 10 your birthday wishes, wherever he may be.

]]>DOCTOR’S FINEST Preview – Week 1: Blink and Waters of Marshttp://nerdist.com/doctors-finest-preview-week-1-blink-and-waters-of-mars/
Sat, 15 Aug 2015 23:00:52 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=291187Tonight, the premiere episode of The Doctor’s Finest, the six-week series that higlights the best in the past several years of Doctor Who. It’s co-produced by BBC America and Nerdist and hosted by Hannah Hart who, on top of introducing the episodes in question, is interviewing fans and luminaries about these episodes. They’re all great and/or important in some way, so why not talk about them?

To kick things off, Hannah will be interviewing internet superstar Jimmy Wong to talk about two huge episodes from the David Tennant/Tenth Doctor era: “Blink” and “The Waters of Mars.” All that airs tonight starting at 8:00pm ET/PT on BBC America!

These two episodes are enormously important to the show and the character, and here’s why…

Blink
For many people, Series 3’s “Blink” is THE episode that got them interested in Doctor Who, and it’s the one a lot of people show to their not-We friends to entice them to watch more. It’s hard to argue with that; it’s an episode that’s as exciting and brilliantly plotted as anything the show’s ever done, or has even been done on most sci-fi television programs, I dare say. But it’s also a real outlier because, well, the Doctor’s barely in it, existing mainly on a TV screen as a DVD Easter egg. I see it more as a treat, a perfect little nugget for fans of the show to celebrate.

“Blink” was written by future showrunner Steven Moffat and he rightly won a Hugo Award for it. It tells the story of Sally Sparrow (played by a pre-all-the-fame Carey Mulligan) as she unravels the weird mystery of the Weeping Angels. The Angels appear in and around an old house, stone statues with wings that most of the time cover their eyes. But they aren’t actually stone statues; they’re strange time creatures which feast on a person’s potential life energy by sending them back in time to live their life to death. The Doctor and Martha Jones are stuck somewhere, but they need to be able to communicate with SOMEONE who can help. Maybe via DVD glitches.

This episode rightly gets named as one of the series’ best, and it shows.

The Waters of Mars
This is the Tenth Doctor’s pen-penultimate story (if we count “The End of Time” as one story altogether, which I do) and it gets DARK. Having been on his own for awhile, the Doctor starts to lose himself in the power inherent with being a Time Lord, and not only that, the Last of the Time Lords. “The Waters of Mars” is the episode that really hammers home just how dangerous and egomaniacal the Doctor can be if left unchecked, and he pays a real price for it. If shame could have caused a regeneration, this would be the episode where he’d have changed. Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford co-wrote this story and they won the 2010 Hugo Award for best dramatic short subject for it.

The Doctor ends up on Mars, just hanging out and looking at stuff, but he’s actually very near to Bowie Base One. It’s the first human outpost on Mars, in the near future to us now. The Doctor’s excited to meet the crew, especially Captain Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) whose story he knows very well. But he’s also very wary because he knows that some disaster befell them and there were no survivors, so he tries to get out of there as quickly as he can… but with water-based critters that turn people into smiling zombies, that’s easier said than done. But this is a fixed point in time; the Doctor can’t just change history, can he? Or CAN HE?! Yeah, like I said, things take a real dark turn.

Both of these episodes are a major blast to watch and an excellent way to kick off BBC America’s The Doctor’s Finest specials. Come back next week when I’ll be talking about Week 2’s choices, “The End of Time,” and Hannah Hart will interview guest Sara Schaefer!

—

Kyle Anderson is the Weekend Editor for Nerdist.com and is the resident Whovian (yes, he likes that term). Hit him up on Twitter!

]]>DOCTOR WHO’s Tenth Doctor Comes to Disney XDhttp://nerdist.com/doctor-whos-tenth-doctor-comes-to-disney-xd/
Wed, 15 Apr 2015 21:30:50 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=242900In a very interesting, rather strange merging of brands, the BBC announced today that its flagship program, a little thing called Doctor Who, you may have heard of it, will begin airing on Disney XD (a.k.a. the Disney Channel for older kids) beginning in June. The network already airs programs like Star Wars Rebels and will begin showing a new Fantastic Four which is set to debut May 9th, before which they’ll show the Who episode “New Earth” as a primer. Really, it’s the channel where Disney can put more action-driven programming on the tube, which does seem like it’d be a good fit for Doctor Who which has action and scares but is also family-friendly.

What makes this all the more intriguing is that XD will only be showing the three full series featuring Tenth Doctor David Tennant. That’s right, not even from the beginning of New Who; just from Series 2 to Series 4, “New Earth” to “Journey’s End.” Curious, especially to forsake the beginning of Tennant’s actual term with “The Christmas Invasion.” I’m sure things will get cut out, but considering “The Stolen Earth,” the first part of Series 4’s finale, has Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister (yes, we know who you are) who only appears in Series 1 and “The Christmas Invasion,” there might be some confused kids out there. And how are they going to explain Captain Jack?!

Beginning Saturday, June 13th, and going through Saturday, June 20th, XD will air eight episodes per day, in marathon chunks, and on the 14th, episodes will be available to watch via the Watch Disney XD app.

Matt Forde, EVP Sales & Co-productions, TV, BBC Worldwide North America, had this to say about the partnership: “Disney XD is recognized for its family-friendly programming making the channel a great partner to introduce the David Tennant seasons of Doctor Who to a new generation of viewers.”

Not sure how I feel about those new viewers only getting the David Tennant viewpoint, but this will perhaps lead them to seek out more since, you know, there have been 30 other seasons, 5 in the new series alone, to discover.

What say you? Is the TARDIS big enough for the Disney crowd or should the whole thing be sonic screwdriver’d away? Let us know below!

]]>10 Years On: Looking Back at DOCTOR WHO Series 1http://nerdist.com/10-years-on-looking-back-at-doctor-who-series-1/
http://nerdist.com/10-years-on-looking-back-at-doctor-who-series-1/#commentsFri, 27 Mar 2015 01:30:47 +0000http://nerdist.com/?p=234577While the rebooted version of Doctor Who is going to be launching its ninth series this fall, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the world getting its first glimpse of the Ninth Doctor. That’s right: on March 26th, 2005, Russell T. Davies’ long-gestating retooling of the perennial British sci-fi staple aired its first episode, “Rose,” and a juggernaut was born again, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. It was a simpler time. Nobody knew what a Weeping Angel was, or gave any thought to what an actor named David Tennant was doing with his life (though it was announced Christopher Eccleston was leaving the show almost immediately after “Rose” aired. Bad timing). While the BBC chose to focus on the property’s 50th anniversary back in November of 2013, we can’t discount the importance of Series 1, and what its successes and failures ensured about the prosperity of the program past Eccleston, through Tennant, across Matt Smith, into Peter Capaldi, and with a little John Hurt thrown in for good measure.

Davies did a few things wrong with the first series, but he did a whole lot right. One of the things he, executive producers Julie Gardner and Mal Young, and producer Phil Collinson, under the aegises of Jane Trantor, did very right was to allow themselves to make these mistakes. Doctor Who is as malleable of a property as any that has ever been on television, and when it was being revamped and developed, it’d hadn’t been on the air in any significant manner since 1989. There had been a lackluster TV movie in 1996 which did things that Davies took and made better, but as it stood, the series, in its new 13-week, 45-minute format, could be anything he wanted. Was it a comedy? Was it a drama? Was it for kids, families, both, neither? It was beholden to no one and no thing aside from what its creators wanted.

That said, here are five things Series 1 did very well, and five things it didn’t do so great.

The Good

1. First and foremost, the show’s biggest accomplishment was in casting a prestigious actor like Christopher Eccleston in the role of the Doctor. Even though he ultimately didn’t have a good time doing it, departing the series at the end of the 13 weeks, he was exactly the mixture of serious and goofy that the series needed to maintain credibility early on. Nobody was really big on the show for the last 5-ish years of the Classic Series, and its tone was a big problem, especially for the Doctor himself. But Eccleston was as respected an actor as any they could have hoped to get. They allowed him to keep his Salford accent, let him dress normally (not a question mark in sight), and they gave him the attitude of a war veteran still reeling from the decisions he’s made. We didn’t know exactly why he was so angry right away, but we knew he was damaged in some way. And Eccleston was an AMAZING Doctor; we can’t let his relative briefness in the part diminish that. If people didn’t connect to him, there wouldn’t have been need of a Tennant.

2. Rose. While I’ve made no secret about not enjoying the Rose/Tenth Doctor relationship, I think she was the perfect companion for the Ninth Doctor. The series couldn’t let the Doctor be the focal point, because he was a mystery to so many, which is why Rose was SO relatable, and so likable, and yet still so brave and heroic. She had a family who were actually important to her life, and the consequences of them on her traveling. She was the audience’s gateway into the Doctor’s world, and her learning about him allowed all the backstory to seep in slowly. If RTD had tried to shoehorn all the 26 years of history into this one series, or even in an episode or two, the casual viewer, who were the lifeblood of the success of the show, would easily have turned off. But, that’s what Rose would have done as well. Billie Piper’s performance is layered in such a way that we really see her trying to decide whether she wants her “normal” life or would rather go with the Doctor forever. For all the importance they unduly lay on her later on, she’s lovely in the first year.

3. The Daleks. The series’ oldest and deadliest recurring villains almost didn’t get to return due to copyright issues with writer Terry Nation’s estate. When the pepperpots finally did return, first in Rob Shearman’s excellent “Dalek” and then in the two-part finale “Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways”, they meant business. Without doing much to update the sort of janky design, the writing and direction gave such gravitas to everything they said and did. They were overused in the future, of course, but that doesn’t mean that, in this one series, they weren’t done immaculately. Through the Daleks we learn about the Time War which has plagued the Doctor since before this series began; we know it was terrible, and we know the Daleks are to blame. It was this idea that flowed through the whole of the first seven series and the 50th Anniversary special. Such a genius idea.

4. Allowing other old fans to write. RTD had been a Doctor Who fan for decades and he brought his love of the series along with his ability to write good TV to the show. While he wrote the bulk of the episodes, certain fantastic episodes were also written by other luminaries in the fan world who eventually became book, TV, and comic writers themselves. Mark Gatiss of The League of Gentlemen used his love of period-set horror to great effect in his “The Unquiet Dead”; Rob Shearman adapted an audioplay he’d done into the brilliant “Dalek”; Paul Cornell, who had authored several New Adventures novels, wrote the paradox-laden “Father’s Day”, which also happens to be the first episode I saw and largely the reason I kept watching; and of course Steven Moffat penned the two-part “The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances” which introduced another series highlight, Captain Jack Harkness, and is still hailed as one of the best stories in the new series by far. These different voices were so important to the continuation of the show.

5. It handled regeneration well right away. Even though Eccleston left, it necessitated the need to explain regeneration to the audience right away, which is something that could always get a bit tricky. Because of this, the point wasn’t belabored and the passing made too sad as to make the audience despondent and inconsolable, like they’d do later on; it merely happened — the Doctor explained it briefly, threw his hands out, and turned into David Tennant with a smile on his face.

The Bad

1. The differing tones. While I do think the changing tone was a learning curve, especially early on, a lot of it just flatly doesn’t work. The show needs to be funny, but not at the expense of the drama. “Rose” contained some of the dumbest comedy bits ever attempted with Mickey getting sucked into a trashcan and replaced with a very obviously plastic replica, and “Aliens of London/World War Three” contained the stupidest aliens the show ever tried, complete with farting air-releasing when they put on their human suits. That episode nearly killed my enjoyment; thank god it was followed by “Dalek.”

2. Adam. While I suppose it’s good to see what a “bad companion” looks like, I just think of the greedy young douche whom Rose picked up during “Dalek” and the Doctor kicked out the next week in “The Long Game” was just a failed experiment, and a waste of time ultimately. He’s barely even involved in the plot of that second episode, just off on his own little knowledge-hungry scheme, and then he’s gone. Who cares?

3. The “Bad Wolf” episode. While I said I appreciated the Daleks in their appearances, I really only like “The Parting of the Ways.” It dates the show way too much to have the characters go to “futuristic” versions of modern-day popular TV shows like The Weakest Link, What Not to Wear, and Big Brother. It’s good for a half-a-second joke when the Doctor looks into camera in the cold open, but beyond that, it’s as dumb as it gets. People in another ten years won’t even remember The Weakest Link, I’m sure of it. The throughline of “Bad Wolf” also didn’t work for me, but it’s so barely-there that it doesn’t matter all that much either way.

4. Being tied to Earth, and Cardiff specifically. Now, I know this series had a very low budget, which is very evident when you go back and watch it now, but just because the show was filmed in Cardiff doesn’t mean it needs to take place there. The Doctor and Rose go back and forward in time, but they never leave Earth beyond going to a space station orbiting Earth. It made the series seem very terrestrial and not in a UNIT years kind of way.

5. There isn’t more of it. Seriously, I could have watched another 13 episodes of Eccleston, Tyler, and Barrowman on adventures but, I guess, as Uncle Miltie said, always leave them wanting more. It makes me said that those 13 episodes are all we have of them all together, especially considering only about half of the episodes are good. They were hitting their stride, all of them on the cast and crew, toward the end, and while it made for good series to follow, one always wonders what might have been.

And so, ten years later, now on our fourth full-time Doctor, I think it’s important to look at the beginning of this whole new journey and thank and respect everybody involved. They all had more to say, but the Ninth Doctor’s story ended right here. He was a pivotal figure in the show and one of the most important. He was, to coin a phrase, fantastic.

What are your favorite Doctor Who Series 1 moments and episodes? Tell me below!

]]>http://nerdist.com/10-years-on-looking-back-at-doctor-who-series-1/feed/9The Ghosts of DOCTOR WHO Christmases Pasthttp://nerdist.com/the-ghosts-of-doctor-who-christmases-past/
Mon, 16 Dec 2013 22:00:13 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=101828Since its return in 2005 (how many times I have started an article with that sentence?), Doctor Who and Christmas have gone together like eggs and nogs. Without fail, for the last eight years, there has been an episode of Doctor Who on television on December the 25th. Whether the specials themselves were overly “Christmassy” is another matter, but you definitely have to give them credit for consistency in programming. The Time Lord in his TARDIS has become as familiar on Christmas as scenes of snow and trees with blinking lights. Interestingly, though, Christmas was not a staple of Doctor Who in its original 26-year stint, with one very obvious and weird exception. So, friends, as “The Time of the Doctor” creeps ever closer, and Matt Smith’s departure is ever imminent, let’s take a look at the previous Christmas episodes and grade them on how much cheer they spread.

1966 – “The Feast of Steven”
During the show’s third season, with William Hartnell still firmly entrenched as the Doctor, Christmas fell on a Saturday. In the middle of the massive, twelve-episode arc story known as “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” in a break from running away from the evil little bastards, the Doctor and his crew (Steven and Sara) have a nearly-unconnected comedic jaunt in contemporary London. At the end of the episode, as was inexplicably the custom back in those days, the Doctor turns to camera to wish the audience a very merry Christmas. That moment was not, apparently, in the script, but it was in director Douglas Camfield’s plans, so either it appears to have been cooked up by Hartnell, Camfield, or both. Being Christmas, the ratings were about 2 million people less than the average for the storyline, but those who did were treated to maybe the least Doctor Who-ish episode in history. Like all but three of the episodes in the story, “The Feast of Steven” is missing, with only stills and fragments of clips left in the archives. A bit of a shame, as the episode sounds totally bonkers.

Believe it or not, that was the one and only time that they allowed an episode of the show to fall on Christmas Day for the rest of the Classic Series, most likely so they wouldn’t have to chance a repeat of the “Feast of Steven” debacle. It’s like the series went out of its way not to acknowledge the holidays, even during the Earthbound UNIT years. Curious.

2005 – “The Christmas Invasion”
This episode brands itself right in the title. It takes place on Christmas and Christmas is in the name. Boom. Seems Russell T. Davies was a huge proponent of the merger of Doctor Who’s brand of science fiction and the Yuletide. His first Christmas episode is easily the most full of holiday spirit and, of course, that makes it terrifying. With the newly-regenerated Doctor stuck in bed, weird things begin occurring, Christmas trees become homicidal, and 1/3 of the population looks like they might kill themselves. So, you know, Christmas. For being the first episode to feature a Doctor, David Tennant sure spends a lot of his time not doing anything. This is really a Rose Tyler and family drama with a bit of human subjugation thrown in for good measure. It gets very dark as it goes on, with Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, willingly destroying a fleeing enemy, and the Doctor then making everyone doubt the woman’s mental and emotional health. That’s not very charitable in either case. Still, it ends with snow (really ash from the exploded Sycorax ship) and some colorful lights, and that’s about all it really needed.

2006 – “The Runaway Bride”
In contrast to “The Christmas Invasion,” the following year gave us arguably one of the least Christmassy Christmas specials. First, it was shot in the summer, and that’s pretty obvious all the way through. Second, it follows Donna Noble (before she was really more than an irritating person) as she tries to get back to her wedding. Who gets married on Christmas? Further, who barely mentions that they’re getting married on Christmas? Thirdly, there’s a car chase with the TARDIS as one of the cars. Fourthly, it lets the Doctor get very dark indeed, as he pretty much decides to destroy the last of a species and wants to watch the Empress suffer. Good thing Donna was around to tell him that’s a bad idea. Really the only thing that would signify it as being a Christmas special, aside from the day on which it was broadcast, are the robot Santas and Christmas trees that were seen the year previous. Lance is a phenomenal a-hole, too. It’s a pretty good episode, but not particularly in keeping with the season.

2007 – “Voyage of the Damned”
Slightly more Christmassy, slightly less good. This episode is a science fiction take on The Poseidon Adventure in which the Doctor delivers a number of big speeches and almost nobody gets out alive. The episode does introduce Wilfred, who in this is just a newspaper seller but who turns out to be Donna’s grandpa. Interesting that two consecutive Christmas specials introduce main characters for the following series, but that certainly wasn’t the plan. My real problem with “Voyage of the Damned” is how ridiculously arch the whole thing is. Everything’s pitched at such a high level that it outstays its welcome really fast. Not all bad, but definitely not one of my favorites.

2008 – “The Next Doctor”
The first Christmas special not to be set on contemporary Earth, this one finds the Doctor in Victorian London meeting the Doctor… kind of. The man who would go on to be the Governor on The Walking Dead, David Morrissey, plays a guy with amnesia who believes himself to be the Doctor. There are also Cybermen walking around with things called “Cybershades,” which are sort of like Cyber ape-dogs. The first 20-25 minutes of this one are pretty darn good. It’s got a lot of references to the Doctor’s past (it even shows all 9 previous Doctors onscreen) and the costumes and sets are really cool. It looks VERY Christmassy. The downfall with it is that it becomes incredibly stupid by the end. A giant Cyberman trampling the city? Only a hot air balloon can save the day? DUMB! Such a good premise, so very wasted.

2009 – “The End of Time part 1”
Not Christmassy. Pile of garbage. All of it is dumb, except one scene in the diner with Wilf. Hate, hate, hate. “The Day of the Doctor,” thankfully, allowed for a bit of retribution, so my abiding memory of Tennant isn’t this crud.

2010 – “A Christmas Carol”
When Steven Moffat took over from RTD, the Christmas specials all were set period, or in a future that looks period. This first one is far and away the best Christmas episode of the lot. In a way only Moffat could, he turns a Charles Dickens classic into a timey-wimey melancholy drama about a mean old man who maybe doesn’t have to be. The look of it is gorgeous and for the first time ever, really, Steampunk makes its way into Doctor Who. Yes, the shark is a bit silly, but it’s a lot less silly than some of the Christmas specials’ features. Also, it’s got Michael Gambon in it, and that is never a bad thing. As much as I hate “The End of Time” is how much I love “A Christmas Carol.”

2011 – “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”
Upon first watch, this story is a fine, if sappy, episode about a mother and her children, but further viewings bring more of its shortcomings to the surface. There’s really not a whole lot of conflict, the solution is far too simplistic, and the finale is far too blatant a heartstring tug. There’s good stuff to be had, though, especially in the first act: The Doctor playing caretaker and creating a perfect house for children is enough to give you a smile. It’s as good as the ol’ bear and duvet. Nice, if brief and unnecessary, reference to “The Caves of Androzani” as well.

2012 – “The Snowmen”
This special marks the one and only time a Christmas episode came in the middle of the series, which was due to some clever fiscal-year shifting on the production team’s part. As such, “The Snowmen” had to work both as a holiday special and as a continuation of the overall storyline. It totally does, though it’s not especially Christmas-themed. Wintery, yes. In it, the Doctor has been hiding out in Victorian London trying not to get involved while Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax do their level best to solve mysteries and things. However, the Doctor springs back to action when he meets a barmaid/governess named Clara and the snow and ice start to come alive. I really, really loved this episode, and was surprised at how much it actually did further the plot, perhaps the most that’s happened since “The Christmas Invasion.”

And now, all that’s left is to wait for “The Time of the Doctor” to air. It seems to me that it’s going to deal with Christmas a bit before focusing on the end of the Eleventh Doctor’s life. I can’t imagine it will be as self-indulgent as “The End of Time,” but if it follows the overall trend of Moffat’s Christmas specials, as well as the high he hit in “The Day of the Doctor,” then everything will be a-okay and we truly will have peace on Earth and good will to all. Exaggerating? We’ll see.

]]>DOCTOR WHO: A Companion’s Companion – Series 4 and Specialshttp://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-4-and-specials/
http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-4-and-specials/#commentsFri, 15 Nov 2013 21:00:01 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=97864After being out of the works for over a decade, Doctor Who now had three seasons of new episodes under its belt, thanks to showrunner Russell T. Davies and crew, and his then-current star, David Tennant, was two years into a highly popular TEN-ure. (I’m sorry; I’m so, so sorry.) For his third and final full series, the Tenth Doctor would be paired with a familiar face, and one that is often cited as the favorite companion. Unfortunately, for my money, she’s saddled with probably the worst story writing, a mix of boring and lame. It does contain four of my favorite episodes, though. Too bad we don’t start with that one.

Voyage of the Damned was the 2007 Christmas special, and easily the worst of the RTD era. If you’ll recall, the TARDIS gets a Titanic in it at the end of the previous series, but that doesn’t last too long. After some quick maneuvering, the Doctor separates and then finds himself aboard the spaceship Titanic, a cruise ship with rich people on it. A bunch of them go down to Earth and pretend to know about Earth culture. Then, the guy who owns the ship tries to crash it into Earth to collect insurance money and the Doctor has to stop it. It’s like The Poseidon Adventure but in space, get it? Lots of people die, get it? Kylie Minogue is in it and dies too, get it? It’s a terrible episode, get it?

Series 4 – 5 April 2008 – 5 July 2008

Now, for this series, Catherine Tate was brought back to play Donna Noble, the pseudo-companion in the 2006 Christmas special, “The Runaway Bride.” She’s brilliant and her story arc is really beautiful, about her becoming the Doctor’s friend and never wanting to stop traveling with him and growing as a person from shallow and abrasive to compassionate and heroic. This all works amazingly well, it just happens to happen through a season with way more thuds than booms.

We begin with Partners in Crime, in which the Doctor and Donna both independently investigate a diet pill that makes people’s fat literally fall off. It falls off and congeals into adorable little creatures called Adipose, and eventually people die from all the fat that they lose. The Doctor and Donna re-find each other and battle the woman behind it all. We see Donna is much more introspective than she was in the Christmas special, and spends time looking at the stars with her granddad Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins), who is lovely. Silly, this story is, though. It’s very, very silly.

At least this is followed up with Fires of Pompeii, which actually features both Karen Gillan, who’d go on to play Amy Pond, and Peter Capaldi, who is forthcoming as the Twelfth Doctor. The Doctor takes Donna back to Ancient Rome, or at least he thinks it’s Ancient Rome; it’s actually Pompeii on the eve of Mt. Vesuvius erupting. It turns out that the eruption is necessary to stop evil magma aliens called Pyroviles from converting humans into molten whatevers to rebuild their lost home world.

This is an excellent example of the “fixed point in time” situations. The Doctor, in righting the timeline, actually ensures that Vesuvius will erupt and therefore kill tens of thousands of people (though I learned recently on QI that most Pompeiians got away before the volcano went boom). Donna has a hard time believing this, and says they have to do something. She convinces him, tearfully, to help one family, just one. Which he does. This sets up right away the importance of the Doctor having someone to question him and keep him humane, and that Donna isn’t just a shrill and loud person but that she’s very deep as well. Love this one.

Unfortunately, now we get 5 straight middling episodes, which are fine, I guess, but really nothing special. First is Planet of the Ood. Guess where they end up? That’s right, the planet of the Ood. After being creepy in Series 2, the Ood are back to again be creepy, but this time be more than just servants who go bad. I’m not sure why RTD loved the damned Ood so much, other than the fact that he created them. Shrug.

Next, it’s the two-parter that brought back the Sontarans, who are a great alien in theory but have only really been used well one and a half times. The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky surmises that the short war potatoes need help from an annoying and wealthy boy genius to poison the entirety of Earth through apparently court-mandated car air conditioners. What have we learned from Doctor Who, people? If something is done by everyone on Earth, it’s probably part of an alien invasion. UNIT is back for this, so that’s cool. And Martha works for UNIT now. Wait, why does she work for UNIT? And why is she back already? Shrug.

Martha goes along with the Doctor and Donna for the next episode, The Doctor’s Daughter, which is very stupid. They happen upon a war going on for “generations” in a hallway between half-cloned humans and fish aliens the Hath. The Doctor is half-cloned right away and a fully-grown blonde girl, eventually named “Jenny” (Georgia Moffett), is the Doctor’s sort-of daughter. Because Jenny got away at the end, a bunch of people STILL keep holding out hope that she’s going to come back. She won’t. In real life, Georgia Moffett is the daughter of Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, so she is in fact the Doctor’s daughter. She’s also married to David Tennant, making her also the Doctor’s wife. Gross.

And the final middling ep is actually okay, if you look past how goofy it is (or if you like how goofy it is). The Unicorn and the Wasp is an Agatha Christie mystery that actually has a young Agatha Christie in it. There’s a person who is an alien wasp that’s killing people in a large manner house in the 1926. This is undoubtedly a fun episode, and of any of the aforementioned middling ones, I like this one the best. It’s a bit of lightness before the next few, which are heeeeeeeavy, boy.

Steven Moffat’s two-parter Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead is very interesting, and we find out later, very important to the future of the story. The Doctor and Donna head to a planet that is entirely a library and it houses every bit of knowledge ever. They’re surprised to find, though, that the library is entirely devoid of people. Soon, there is an expedition that arrives with people in spacesuits, believing the air to be toxic. They’re looking for evidence of what might have happened. Among this expedition is Professor River Song (Alex Kingston) who apparently knows the Doctor but has never seen him “so young” before. She knows him in his future. Scary, I know. Even scarier is that the library is all infested with a shadow insect race, or whatever, called the Vashta Nerada which live in the darkness and, like piranha, can devour people in seconds, leaving only their date-recorder to speak for them. “Hey, who turned out the lights?”

The library’s computer system is alive, and inside its matrix, it thinks it’s a little girl. Donna gets “saved” before she is eaten by the Vashta and ends up inside the matrix, thinking she’s married and has children, living a whole life, in fact. This can’t last forever, though, and River Song sacrifices herself to save the Doctor as he tries to destroy the shadow monsters and retrieve his friend from the computer. Even though she appears to have died, River is saved and the Doctor races to implant her essence inside the matrix where she takes care of Donna’s fake kids and hangs out with all her dead-but-saved expedition friends.

I liked these episodes okay at the time, but I LOVE them now in retrospect, now that we know what we know about River Song and her timeline. While the whole of her life isn’t as interesting as it started in our view of things, this ending is satisfying both backward and forward in the chronology. Plus, it’s nice to see her with Tennant just once, seeing as she’d spend so much of her time with Smith thereafter.

After those, we have my favorite episode of the year, and actually one of my top 5 new Who stories ever: Midnight. On the planet Midnight for rest and relaxation, the Doctor is restless and leaves Donna by the pool to go see the strange sapphire fjords or whatever the hell on a tour transport. It takes a couple of hours to get there, and the small group of passengers don’t really seem to want to chat, but the Doctor forces them to by messing with the entertainment system. Unfortunately, the transport soon finds itself infiltrated, perhaps, by an unseen entity. It gets into one passenger (Lesley Sharp), and she begins repeating things people say, mostly the Doctor because he talks the most. Soon, though, she’s saying things at the same time as him and the other passengers start freaking out even more than before. They start to turn on the Doctor and do so even more when, somehow, the alien starts saying things BEFORE the Doctor, who seems incapable of not saying the thing. The passengers all assume he’s the alien now, but can he convince them otherwise?

I just adore this as a piece of stand-alone storytelling. Written out of necessity, the whole thing more or less takes place in one windowless space, the transport, and all of the drama is done with the cast, who are all excellent. (Among the guest cast is David Troughton, son of Patrick, and Colin Morgan, who’d go on to play the eponymous character in Merlin.) This is some of Tennant’s best work in the whole of his tenure, and it’s such a bleak, dark story with troubling themes and unexplained motivations. Even for an RTD episode, this is some dark stuff.

That was the companion-lite episode, so what of the Doctor-lite one? That would be Turn Left, which a lot of people absolutely love, but I’ll tell you this: I don’t like it. It’s not that there isn’t terrific acting in it from Tate, Cribbins, and Jacqueline King as Donna’s mom. All of them are wonderful, no question. It’s that it’s a “what-if?” storyline which takes place because Donna has a hallucinogenic spider on her back (?) and it causes her to make one decision differently before she ever met the Doctor and her whole life changed. The Doctor dies, Torchwood is destroyed, all sorts of bad things happen, and the people in England have to cram into tiny abodes and live on rations and things. Then Rose Tyler, who’s been popping up periodically this season, shows up to remind Donna of what was supposed to happen and then they try to make it so.

Here’s my problem with “what if?” storylines: Who gives a shit? They aren’t real. They have no bearing on the future. It’s not like anything that happens in “Turn Left” really has much impact on the proceedings and it all goes back to one at the end. I’ve heard arguments that it’s important to show that Donna is important and that even someone as seemingly meaningless as a temp from Cheswick can make a difference. Okay, we knew that already. Donna’s been proving that all series long. So, again I ask – Who cares? It’s a wasted episode if you ask me, and no amount of arguing has made me change my mind.

And we end the series on what is (or should have been) the most epic two-parter ever: The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End. It sees the return of everybody. That’s right; everybody. Rose, Jackie, Mickey, Martha, Captain Jack, his Torchwood crew (the living ones), Sarah Jane, hell, even Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister, pops up to stop the Daleks’ plot to pull various planets out of their orbit (including Earth) to create a mechanism of some sort in space. It’s Davros’ fault. Oh yeah, Davros is in this, too. At the end of the first episode, the Doctor is reunited with Rose, or would be if he didn’t get grazed in the chest by a Dalek blast. He tries to stop it, but he starts regenerating… Oh no…

What a CLIFFHANGER! Is David Tennant really regenerating? Did they hide it that well? Oh no! No, it’s a cop out, fuckers. He instead, like a dick, siphons off his regenerative energy into his own severed hand, which Captain Jack had in Torchwood and brought back with him. So, he can stay the Tenth Doctor for a while longer. Umm… okay.

The problem, though, is that Donna, who feels like she has nothing to contribute to the death of everybody, touches the hand and infuses some of the Time Lord energy into herself and some of her humanity into the hand. The hang grows into another Tenth Doctor, this one human, and Donna gets to be all smart and Doctor-y. She’s the “Doctor-Donna.” She ends up saving everybody’s life and stopping the Daleks. Everybody goes back where they belong and the Doctor leaves Handy Doctor with Rose, because why shouldn’t she have everything she ever wanted like she’s the most important human who ever lived or whatever? Unfortunately, Donna can’t sustain being part Time Lord, and so the Doctor has to take her brain back to where it was before he met her, meaning she’s back to being a shallow and abrasive person with no memory of the Doctor.

This ending is the saddest companion departure maybe ever. It’s so good and sad that it almost makes up for the complete load of TRIPE the rest of the episode is. Come ON! The Daleks invented a “Reality Bomb.” Rose came back… why the hell does Rose keep being important?!?! Just because she was the first companion doesn’t mean she’s like the Doctor’s all-time greatest got-away love. Gag me with a spoon, people. The Handy Doctor is sure convenient, isn’t it? This is RTD having his cake and eating it, too. UGH. But, I will say this: it’s a hell of a lot better than David Tennant’s actual final story.

Specials – 25 December 2008 – 1 January 2010

When it was announced that RTD and Tennant were leaving, it was then announced that Steven Moffat would be stepping in as showrunner. They decided to give him a year to get his ducks in a row, and so a full calendar year-and-a-bit consisting only of five specials was devised, one on Christmas 2008, one on Easter 2009, one in the middle of November 2009, and a two-parter for Christmas Day and New Year’s Day 2009-2010. One of these is good, one of is okay, and the others are crapola.

The okay one is The Next Doctor, an evocative title in which the Doctor goes back to Victorian England at Christmastime and encounters Cybermen, Cyber Shades (which are like cyber-ish ape-dog things), and someone claiming to be the Doctor (David Morrissey) but with no memory of any of the other lives he had. He’s got a sonic screwdriver (which isn’t sonic), a companion, and a TARDIS (which is a hot air balloon). But, he’s actually a guy named Jackson Lake who just thinks he’s the Doctor. There’s a giant, Godzilla-sized Cyber Controller in this story too, which is actually complete crap. Why did I think this one was okay? Cuz of David Morrissey? Okay.

Second, it’s Planet of the Dead, in which the Doctor gets on a double-decker bus on Easter which goes through a wormhole and ends up on a desert planet on which flying shark things exist and they want to devour things whole, so them coming through the wormhole to London would be a bad thing. On the bus is jewel thief Lady Cristina de Souza (Michelle Ryan), who in any other case WOULD have been the next companion, but we’re to believe the Doctor is sad and alone and doesn’t want to face his future, in which his time ends and four knocks will usher his death. This is a pretty dumb story.

In November, we get the one that’s actually brilliant, The Waters of Mars. The Doctor goes to Mars for fun and comes across the first human settlement. He knows everybody there from the history books and is so excited, except he figures out that he’s arrived just as the crew all are supposed to die, at the hands of liquid aliens which infect and zombify them. He tries to ignore the fact that he wants to save them, but eventually he gives in in a big bad way. He decides he isn’t just going to play time’s game. He’s the Time Lord Victorious; he didn’t just survive the Time War, he won it. Why shouldn’t he save people who are meant to die, even if it means positive things that happen from their deaths don’t happen? When Adelaide Brooke (Lindsay Duncan) refuses to let the Doctor win, she kills herself, ensuring her own daughter will know greatness. That’s hella dark, you guys. The Doctor seems ready to face his fate now, doesn’t he?

Welllllll, no. Instead, he minces about for two more episodes and acts like a spoiled brat and not the hero we’ve all come to know and love. In The End of Time, Parts 1 & 2, the Master (John Simm) is reawakened via potions, is unstable, tries to make himself every human on Earth, and brings back the Time Lords, who want to use the Earth as their new Gallifrey, before eventually helping the Doctor defeat Rassilon (Timothy Dalton).

The Doctor, meanwhile, doesn’t want to die, and tells Wilf that he’s scared to become a new man, even though we’ve always known the Doctor remains, the same man just changes. It’s a moment few Doctors have, the fear of not being around anymore, and I’ll grant the Tenth Doctor this, because it’s a nice scene. However. By the end of the episode, he hasn’t heard the four knocks, but when he does it’s because Wilf is trapped in a room that will soon fill with radioactivity. The Doctor gets ANGRY at Wilf and the fact that he has to save him, and thus sacrifice himself. Wilf, because he’s a saint, even tells the Doctor to let him die (!), because the Doctor is more important than he is. But no, the Doctor does save Wilf and absorbs the radiation and begins literally the longest “I’m gonna regenerate soon” period any Doctor ever has.

He goes and does one more good deed, no matter how silly, for all of his past friends and companions. He saves Martha and Mickey, who are married for some reason, from a Sontaran. He sets Captain Jack up with the midshipman from “Voyage of the Damned,” he saves Sarah Jane’s son, Luke, from being hit by a car, hell he even visits the great granddaughter of Nurse Redfern, whose name is Verity Newman. He gets Donna’s father in the past to buy a winning lottery ticket to give to Donna on her wedding day. Then he goes and sees Rose just a couple of weeks before she’ll eventually meet the Ninth Doctor. He sees EVERYBODY and says goodbye to ALL of them. He should be satisfied. But what does he say? With tears in his eyes, like a child, says “I don’t want to go,” making the Tenth Doctor’s regeneration the least satisfying thing in the history of anything.

Seriously, my anger at this ending cannot properly be quantified. Why would he STILL not want to go? Fucking man up, Doctor. Yes, maybe it is unfair, but you’re the goddamned Doctor. The Fifth Doctor saved one person and it caused him to regenerate. The Third Doctor faced his fears, thus leading to his death. The Tenth Doctor whined like a baby and made an old man concede to his own death. I adored the Tenth Doctor up until the end of Series 4 and then Russell T. Davies just started making him a knob. And worse than that, an unheroic knob. Heroes don’t cry because they got an extra 30 years to say goodbye to everybody. GAH.

Anyway, after this incredibly overblown and melodramatic finale, which was much more about RTD leaving than about Tennant leaving, Matt Smith shows up and is weird and kooky and exciting and definitely not whiny. I couldn’t wait for the Smith/Moffat era to begin, and because it premiered in April, I didn’t have to wait long. And because I’ll write another one of these for Monday, neither will you.

]]>http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-4-and-specials/feed/14DOCTOR WHO: A Companion’s Companion – Series 2http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-2/
http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-2/#commentsTue, 12 Nov 2013 00:00:16 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=97163Doctor Who comes back to television screens for the first time in essentially 16 years and for 13 weeks, it’s a hit again. Then, BOOM! The lead actor turns into a different guy at the end. Whether or not people were pleased about Christopher Eccleston leaving and David Tennant taking his place, the change forced new viewers to deal with the idea of regeneration right away. And, lucky for viewers, there was a chance to get used to this new weirdo with admittedly excellent hair in the form of a Christmas special, which would become a staple of Doctor Who since the return. Some are Christmassier than others, but few have as much to do narratively than The Christmas Invasion.

Making a crash-landing back at Rose’s homestead, the new Doctor falls out of the TARDIS and passes out. He’s going through a regenerative crisis, which is pretty common, and needs to go to Jackie Tyler’s flat to recuperate. Rose is understandably upset by just having seen her friend turn into another person. Santa robots and evil Christmas trees attack them, and the Doctor springs back to wakefulness to ward them off. He’s still not out of the woods, though, and his constant exhaling of regenerative energy is attracting all kinds of baddies, including the Sycorax, who now want the Earth to surrender.

To ensure their victory, the Sycorax hypnotize everyone on the planet with Type A blood and they all stand somewhere dangerous so that if Earth does not concede, all of the people will jump to their doom. The new Prime Minister, Harriet Jones (Prime Minister), recruits Rose to help, but the Doctor is still out of commission. Eventually, the Doctor does wake up and face the Sycorax leader in a sword fight, wherein he gets his hand cut off (VERY IMPORTANT FOR LATER) but he regrows it thanks to his regenerative state. Anyway, he gets them to leave, but Harriet Jones (Prime Minister) gets Torchwood to fire on them as they’re leaving, and they’re destroyed. The Doctor is unhappy about this.

In many ways, “The Christmas Invasion” is more important than any of the previous episodes because it has to introduce people to the first new Doctor of the new series. In much the same way that if Patrick Troughton hadn’t been accepted, the show might not have lasted, if Tennant had not been accepted, we wouldn’t still be talking about Doctor Who. It’s also a gamble in that we don’t get to see too much of the Tenth Doctor because he’s in a coma, but Rose is the audience surrogate anyway, so it’s all right. I think some of Tennant’s dialogue during his reemergence from the TARDIS is a bit hokey (especially the Lion King bit), but you can’t argue that he didn’t have charisma right away.

It was four months before audiences were able to see the Tenth Doctor for anything more than this fleeting instance, but in April of 2006, the proper Series 2 began.

Series 2 – 15 April 2006 – 8 July 2006

Now, a lot of people love Series 2, mainly for the relationship growth between the Tenth Doctor and Rose. Many even lay the initials “OTP” on them, which I can only imagine means Ontological Train Platform. While I generally don’t have a problem with the idea of the Doctor being a romantic or even sexual being, I always feel like he’s just beyond it and doesn’t really care one way or the other. As such, I’m not a particular fan of Series 2, because I never really bought Tennant and Piper together. She was much better with Eccleston, I thought. Anyway, I know that’s not a popular belief, but it’s my belief nonetheless.

As far as episodes go, I think Series 2 only has about 5 really terrific ones, a few that are fine, and a couple that are very dumb. And yet, for some people, it’s their favorite Tennant year. I mean, it’s fine.

We start with New Earth, in which the Doctor takes Rose to a completely different planet, which is a brand new concept for the new series. In all of Series 1, the Doctor only took Rose backwards and forwards in time on or around the planet Earth. Here, though, they get to go to a planet that isn’t Earth, but is called New Earth. Step in the right direction, I guess. This episode sees the return of The Face of Boe and Lady Cassandra from “The End of the World,” and the first appearance of cat nurses. There are decent elements to this one, and the Doctor is pretty great, but I can’t stand all the body-switching stuff with Cassandra’s brain in Rose and the Doctor. Dumb.

Next, they pair go back in time to Victorian Scotland for Tooth and Claw, an episode that bravely claims that the royal family are all werewolves. That’s a pretty cool idea. The whole thing about lycanthropy being somehow linked to alien something or other has never made sense to me, nor has the idea of a cult of wolf-worshippers. The action is pretty good, though, as is the CGI werewolf which looks a lot better than it might. However, I think Rose is really irritating in this episode. Also, in this episode, we see the beginning of Torchwood, which was created by Queen Victoria as a means of keeping the British Empire safe from alien invaders.

The third episode is where we finally get an episode that I like more or less without reservation, School Reunion, written by Toby Whithouse. In it, the Doctor and Rose go undercover at a school to investigate weird activity at the behest of Mickey Smith. The Doctor is pretending to be a science teacher and Rose a cafeteria worker, much to her chagrin. The Doctor notes how well behaved the children are and how abnormally intelligent. Someone else is curious about the school and comes to check it out, that being a journalist named Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen). The Doctor is pleased to see his old companion, but, since she doesn’t recognize him, he keeps up the ruse of him being John Smith. This is all for naught when she discovers the TARDIS and realizes what’s going on.

She’s also brought K-9 with her, continuing on from the failed pilot for K-9 and Company from back in the early ’80s. Rose and Sarah Jane immediately form a rivalry, each thinking they were “special” in the Doctor’s travels, but really they’re just one of dozens. However, soon they start laughing at the Doctor for being so goofy. It happens. The headmaster at the school (Anthony Stewart Head) is actually a Krillitane, a species that absorbs and adapts from other species into its own, and he’s been smartening up the student body for use in their evil, computer-based plans. The headmaster tries to get the Doctor to join him, but that’s a silly idea.

The alien plot of this episode is not the most compelling, but the character interactions are all fantastic. They deal with the Doctor’s propensity to leave people behind and for picking up new people rather easily. The Doctor tells Rose that it pains him to see his companions get old when he merely changes and goes on. We also get Mickey realizing he’s the “Tin Dog” and wants to be a proper companion, which irritates Rose. And K-9 blows up, if only to be somehow rebuilt again and given back to Sarah Jane as the Doctor says goodbye, even though he does see her again.

Next up is Steven Moffat’s episode for the year, The Girl in the Fireplace, which is a fun timey-wimey adventure that works incredibly well on its own but doesn’t really fit in the context of the season, especially with Rose and her continually puppy-dog eyes for the Doctor at every other point in the series, yet here, she doesn’t really seem to mind that the Doctor cavorts with Madame du Pompadour. Regardless, the idea of a spaceship being somehow connected through time to Versailles, and, moreover, that clockwork robots think they need the organs of a famous French historical figure to fix the ship is a very interesting concept that works largely very well.

In this episode, we also get the thread that Moffat explores later during his time as showrunner of the Doctor meeting a person at various points in their life but never when he means to and always to the human’s detriment. It’s really the time traveler’s dilemma: you either take a person with you or never see them again, but popping in and out does neither party any favors. “The Girl in the Fireplace” is a great example of this, and for that I think it’s pretty tops.

After that is the series’ first two-parter, Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel by Tom MacRae. The Doctor, Rose, and Mickey end up in a parallel Earth when the TARDIS slips through dimensions. In this reality, Rose’s father, Pete Tyler, is still alive and is a telecommunications magnate. He’s still married to Jackie, even though they don’t really get along, but they never had any kids. Mickey has a doppelganger here named Ricky who is part of a rebel group trying to take down authority. Pete is working with Cybus Industries, the CEO of which is trying to get the President of Great Britain to sign off on a plan to upgrade people’s brains using EarPods.

Even though the president says no, Cybus is doing it anyway, and as such has created this universe’s version of Cybermen; they begin assimilating and deleting people by the bunches. Rose talks to this universe’s Pete, but he’s less than fatherly, seeing as he never actually had a daughter to begin with. This Jackie doesn’t like Rose, but it’s fine because she becomes a Cyberman anyway. In the end, Pete helps defeat the Cybermen along with the rebels. Mickey does his part, but Ricky is killed. Mickey decides to stay and take up where his counterpart left off.

I like this two-parter because it reintroduced the Cybermen, who remain my favorite monsters on the show, and it does something sort of new with the idea of parallel dimensions. I generally think alternate universe or alternate timeline storylines are a waste of time, seeing as we know there won’t be many lasting effects in the series, but here Mickey stays behind and Rose knows that a version of her father is alive, which gives the story more gravitas and yet still the freedom of being in another reality.

This is followed by The Idiot’s Lantern, by Mark Gatiss. It’s about an alien called “The Wire” which exists in televisions sucking people’s faces off while they watch the Queen’s coronation in 1953. There’s family stuff in it that’s quite good but ultimately this episode is pretty forgettable. In fact, there’s several episodes of this series that take place in the suburbs and none of them are particularly enjoyable for me; this one is probably the most watchable. Meh.

However, two episodes that I can ALWAYS watch are The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, credited to Matt Jones, but really probably done by Russell T. Davies. In it, the Doctor and Rose end up on a research station in deep space on a planet that somehow is orbiting a black hole without being sucked in. There is writing scrawled around that even the TARDIS’ translation circuits can’t read. The base has servants in the form of the Ood, strange-looking, tendril-covered aliens who have an orb connected to them from which they can speak. They apparently live to serve and keep the station working properly.

The crew awakens an entity known as “The Beast” while they drill into the planet’s immensely powerful core and it infects the historian among the crew. He begins killing off members while the Doctor and a scientist go into the planet to see what is possibly the oldest thing in the universe. Anyway, long story short, the Beast takes over the Ood and they start attacking while the Doctor finds a massive creature that looks like Satan that has no mind, alluding to the fact that the Beast is no longer inside its body.

I really adore this two-parter, and it’s my favorite story of the year by a long shot. I love the ideas and how genuinely scary it is. It also introduces the Ood, which aren’t used particularly well later on, but here they’re still a very good idea, and a very effective threat. Plus, this is one of the best examples of the few times the show has tried to deal with the Devil and religious iconography. Many other stories visually pull from this one (the Doctor’s space suit especially), and it’s still the best use of them all.

Now, a lot of people seem to like Love & Monsters, the first in what became known as the “Doctor-Lite” episodes, a scheduling necessity which became a staple from here on out. This one is a first-person narrated pseudo-comedy about a guy who encountered the Doctor and who gets together with a group of people to talk about their experiences, and eventually they become friends, and a romantic relationship even blossoms between the guy and a girl in the group. However, the person who formed the group is actually an alien called an “Absorbolof” which sucks people up into itself. The monster was the product of a Blue Peter contest, by the way. I don’t dislike this episode per say, I just think it’s a bit silly and it purports that it’s okay for a guy to have a relationship with a girl who’s stuck in a pane of concrete. That ain’t okay, man.

The next episode, Fear Her by Matthew Graham, has the dubious distinction of being the only New Who episode I’ve only watched once, on my initial watch of the episodes back in 2009. It’s got something to do with a girl and a monster she created out of drawings. It’s also got to do with the London Olympics in 2012 and the Doctor, stupidly, gets to carry the torch and even light the thing. That’s literally all I remember. A lot of people thing “Fear Her” is the absolute nadir of Doctor Who, but I don’t. If it were THAT bad, I’d probably have watched it again at some point just as a cultural experiment. Instead, I nothing it. I have no reason to watch it again.

And we end the series on a high and low; high in quality and low in happy endings – Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. The Doctor and Rose return to London in the present and are fairly surprised to see that there have been ghost sightings throughout the world at various increments. The Doctor gets his handy 3D glasses out and some ghost-detecting device to try to figure it out. He and Jackie Tyler get picked up by Torchwood, which we finally find out is the clandestine alien-fighting/retrieval unit that picks up extraterrestrial technology to reverse engineer. Turns out, Torchwood is messing with the universes and is behind the ghosts. When the ghosts finally become corporeal, we see that they’re Cybermen from the parallel universe coming through.

Very bad stuff begins to happen but soon even worse stuff happens. Torchwood has a sphere which the Doctor calls a “Void Ship,” designed only to exist in the space between universes. However, when this ship opens, it’s got some damn Daleks in it. The Daleks have a device called the “Genesis ark” which can create more and more Daleks. Oh, no. Mickey and his pal Jake from the alternate dimension have come through the rift as well, using buttons around their neck which they got from their world’s Torchwood. Jake takes the Doctor to see Pete Tyler about sealing the breach before his universe is destroyed through heat.

The only way to stop the Cybermen and the Daleks (who are now fighting each other in the “Battle of Canary Wharf”) is to use Torchwood’s technology to suck them all into the void. The Doctor is able to do this, but Rose is being sucked in as well. The Doctor can’t reach her. Luckily, Pete zaps into this reality and zaps Rose out of it again. However, now the breach is closed and the Doctor and Rose can no longer see each other. Sad times. Rose has her father, her mother, and Mickey, though, which you’d think would make her happy. Using a holographic communiqué, the Doctor is able to say goodbye to Rose, but can’t return her confession of love. Probably because he’s 900 fucking years old and shouldn’t even have thought about falling in love with a 19 year old shopgirl from London. Anyway.

The series ends on a very sad note, followed by a very confusing one when Catherine Tate in a wedding dress somehow ends up on the TARDIS. Audiences would have to wait until Christmas 2006 to figure out what any of that meant. As for Series 2, it’s another mixed bag, but with some very excellent highs. All three two-parters are quite good and a couple of the one-offs are too. Nothing in it is really horrible, but there is a bit of blech for sure. David Tennant, in his first season, really comes on strong and is the Doctor without much time needed to get used to him.

He’d be in need of a new companion in the next series, and while I’m not a huge fan of that companion’s storyline, I think Series 3 is probably my favorite as far as writing and individual plot threads. Come back Wednesday to read why.

]]>http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-2/feed/6DOCTOR WHO: A Companion’s Companion – Series 1http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-1/
http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-1/#commentsFri, 08 Nov 2013 23:30:12 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=96720After another 8 years of no televised Doctor Who, but heaps and gobs of Eighth Doctor novels and Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Doctor audio plays, it came time for a return. In 2003, the show’s 40th anniversary, a Flash-animated web series called “Scream of the Shalka” was produced. However, the thunder from this was completely stolen, because it was also announced that a proper live-action series would be returning to BBC One, headed up by Queer as Folk and Casanova creator Russell T. Davies, who had also been a long-time fan and had written for the Virgin New Adventures novel range.

Since the show had been off the air since 1989, save for that one 90-minute period in May of 1996, it was deemed pertinent by BBC Wales’ Commissioner of Drama Jane Tranter and producers Davies, Julie Gardner, and Phil Collinson to have an established, name actor in the lead role, since they weren’t sure how the larger public would react. They decided upon character actor Christopher Eccleston, who had worked with Davies before and had been the writer’s first choice for a role in Queer as Folk.

The companion, a formerly thankless role, really, would now be coming to the forefront, as would their family and relationships. Davies was key in turning the show into more of a character-based adventure drama than a strictly sci-fi play, the way the classic series had largely been. Ace’s turn in the last two seasons of the old show, as well as Dr. Grace Halloway in the TV movie, must surely have influenced Davies in the creation of Rose Tyler, a 19-year-old shopgirl from London with a flirty mom and a dumb boyfriend.

To play this part, Davies cast pop star Billie Piper, which at the time must have felt a bit like stunt casting, or at least trying to appeal to the younger audiences with a known personality. I had no idea who she was, so it didn’t do anything for me but upon retrospect. It is largely through Rose that the story of the first series of the rebooted Doctor Who played out, and it’s much easier for the audience to side with someone they already like.

Now, whether it was always intended for Eccleston to do just one series of the show or not is debatable, but what is known is that he was not pleased with the first batch of filming, which it has to be said produced possibly the worst episodes of the series. And, it’s also sad that the night of the premiere in 2005 came with the announcement that the actor wouldn’t return after this series.

Series 1 – 26 March 2005 – 18 June 2005

But forget all that. Let’s talk about the episodes themselves. Because this show was for all intents and purposes brand new, it wasn’t clear what tone the show would take – if it would be straight drama, horror, comedy, or a mixture of the three. Certain people involved in the making of the early episodes, namely director Keith Boak, clearly thought this show was to be campy and silly because the three episodes he shot are the dumbest and most ridiculous, despite some decent character stuff.

The first of these Boak monstrosities is Rose, the ostensible pilot. It introduces us to Rose and her mother Jackie (Camille Coduri) and boyfriend Mickey (Noel Clarke). One night while staying late at the department store in which she works, young Rose Tyler is set upon by violent living mannequins. (It’s the Autons, you guys!) Almost immediately, she is saved by a mysterious man who takes her hand and pulls her away from danger. He says he’s the Doctor and then he blows up the store. But, that’s not the end of the plastic terror. The Nestene Consciousness is somewhere in London, and Rose eventually (mainly because her boyfriend gets EATEN BY A GARBAGE CAN AND REPLACED), she helps the Doctor.

In this episode, we learn a lot about this strange man, but not too much. Unlike the TV movie, which tried to force-feed 26 years of continuity into the first 20 minutes of a movie, “Rose,” and all of Series 1, doled information out gradually, so Rose learns about the Doctor as the audience does. He’s still a mystery to us for a while. It also sets up that Rose is plucky and clever without being superhumanly smart like a Nyssa or Adric. She’s normal, but with the ability to be extraordinary, which is something the Doctor immediately latches on to. We know he’s been traveling on his own for a while, but he likes having someone around.

While “Rose” isn’t the best opener, it did a lot of things right, but without the next episode, The End of the World, probably a lot of viewers would have tuned out. The Doctor takes Rose 5 billion years into the future to Platform One, an orbiting space station used for people to look at the Earth, which has been left empty for ages. Today is the day the sun expands and many different species of alien elite come to watch the world burn. That’s where you take a girl right away, eh?

The “last human” arrives, and it turns out she’s just a sheet of skin with a face and a brain in a jar. Her name is Lady Cassandra and she’s the worst, which I think we can all agree. She’s racist, too, saying she’s the last “pure” human that hasn’t mixed with alien blood or been cloned or whatever. She tries to get everyone on the station killed so she can collect insurance money. The Doctor figures it out and saves most everyone.

Why this episode is great is that it does a myriad of continuity things without really going anywhere beyond a platform. 1) It tells us that the Doctor is a Time Lord and the last of his kind, 2) It sets up the idea of the Time War, which becomes all too important later on, 3) It lets Rose know that the Doctor can be merciful, but can also just as easily not be, and 4) It lets Rose realize that time travel means being outside of whether or not your family is alive or dead. That is a TON of stuff. It’s also a whole lot of fun, despite the use of Britney Spears.

After that, as would become customary, the Doctor takes Rose from the distant future to the nominal past, ending up in 1869 Cardiff and meeting Charles Dickens in The Unquiet Dead, written by Mark Gatiss. In it, an alien vapor species known as the Gelth are inhabiting the bodies of dead people and making zombies out of them. Scary, huh? I really love this episode, because it shows right away that this version of Doctor Who is not afraid to do horror and because it’s got a lot of humor, a lot of pathos, and a lot more of the Doctor’s backstory. He’s done some bad things in his life, especially in the Time War. We also get the idea that Cardiff has a rift in it, which is convenient because the show is shot there, but also because it sets up the later spinoff series Torchwood very nicely.

Next, we go back to Earth for a two-parter called Aliens of London/World War Three. These were the other two episodes directed by Keith Boak. He’s a terrible director. There are big farty aliens. I really dislike it. But, we do get some important things, which is irritating given how much I wish I could write it off entirely. The main thing is that the Doctor brings Rose back home a whole year after she left. Her mother thought she was dead, and her boyfriend Mickey had been the suspect for a while. We learn that time travel isn’t perfect and we, for once, actually see the familial problems that it creates. Second, we are introduced to Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, who becomes important. And tertiarily (not a word) we’re re-introduced to UNIT. The rest of it can go away in toto.

Next is Dalek, written by Rob Shearman. It is to many people the best episode of the series, and it gives new viewers their first (of way too many) glimpses at the Doctor’s oldest foes, the Daleks. Or one Dalek to be specific. This one is being held prisoner by a rich American collector in an underground bunker in the desert. It, too, is apparently the last of its kind, and the Doctor is terrified of it, then is spitefully thrilled when he finds out that it’s all but deactivated. Rose’s compassion gives the Dalek strength and it goes on a rampage, EX-TER-MIN-A-TING just about everybody in the place. The Doctor, showing his coldest side to date, wants nothing more than to wipe this thing out. He doesn’t, though, thanks to Rose calming him down. A triumph, this episode.

“Dalek” also gives us the character of Adam (Bruno Langley), who is the first new companion since the FIRST new companion. He doesn’t work out, though. The next story, The Long Game, takes the travelers to Satellite 5, a space station orbiting Earth in the year 200,000. People are obsessed with news and are forever looking at some kind of screen. While the main plot involves the Doctor finding out the satellite is under the control of a big frozen mouth, Adam gets a brain implant to absorb knowledge far beyond any he should. This pisses off the Doctor and he sends Adam out. Rose loses her companion, which is fine.

Speaking of Rose losing things, next we have Father’s Day, written by Paul Cornell. This is the very first episode of the new Doctor Who that I watched, and is largely responsible for me continuing on and becoming the insane nerd about it you all know. In it, the Doctor allows Rose to see the moment her father died, when she was just a baby. Morbid. She turns away, though. Then she wants him to show it to her again, which means they have to stand further back than their previous selves. This time, she yells out, causing Pete Tyler not to die and the earlier them to go away. Changing the past is bad news, and soon things called Reapers, which basically eat time, show up and start picking off people. Rose is able to meet her father and learn that he might not have been the great guy she always thought he was. Eventually, she has to come to terms with the fact that if he doesn’t die, the timeline will continue to be eaten. It’s a “fixed point” in history, if you will.

What a great concept. Show us how messed up things can get if anything particular gets changed. We also see how dangerous it is to cross your own timeline and to meddle in the past (I mean, without being the Doctor and meddling on purpose). Here again, we get a lot of stuff about Rose’s family and the Doctor proves himself to be even more alien, which is always a plus in my book. He gives up at one point and decides these people aren’t worth saving, but then changes his mind. It’s delightful.

Next we have current head man Steven Moffat’s first foray into the new series in the form of the two-parter The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. Moffat would be the only writer besides Davies himself to write for every series of the Davies era, and thanks to him taking over as EP and head writer, Moffat is now the only writer who has written for every single series since 2005. That’s quite a thing, isn’t it?

Anyway, we’re taken to WWII London, where the Doctor and Rose are chasing a piece of space debris. They quickly meet Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), a roguish 25th Century man who used to be a Time Agent but has since become a con man, trying to swindle the Doctor and Rose out of money. This isn’t the bad stuff, though; there’s a creepy kid with a gas mask on who continually asks for his “mummy” and who apparently spreads some kind of infection. This infection, we soon learn, makes other people have a gas mask and ask for their mummy too.

The boy is Jamie, the “brother” of a young girl named Nancy. She’s really his mummy, though, and it’s her he’s been looking for. Turns out, the gas mask zombies were the work of nanogenes from the piece of space debris, an ambulance in reality, and they stupidly tried to fix the hurt Jamie but didn’t understand human biology, resulting in a gas mask face. The Doctor is able to get them to be less stupid and fix people through Nancy’s admission that she is Jamie’s mummy. Then “Everybody Lives!”

Really a terrific story, and it introduces us to Captain Jack, who is saved from self-destruction by the Doctor and becomes a new companion. Third new companion of the year, oh my. Everybody loves Captain Jack. He sticks around for the next episode, Boom Town, in which one of the farty aliens who didn’t die in the earlier story is now getting ready to blow up Cardiff with nuclear energy so she can get off of the planet. The Doctor catches her and says he’s going to bring her back to her planet, even though it means she’s going to be executed. It’s a moral dilemma the Doctor has. The alien woman didn’t kill a pregnant woman, so you know she’s not all bad, but she is a war criminal, which is pretty much terrible. Luckily, it all works out, because she tries to use the TARDIS to jump start her alien skateboard thing, but it just makes her an egg so that she can, indeed, start life over. Touching and gross.

Finally, we come to the two-part finale of the series: Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways. I haven’t yet mentioned “Bad Wolf,” and that’s because it’s kind of dumb and doesn’t make sense. It’s a pair of words that, apparently, Rose used in the future to let her or the Doctor know something about something. I don’t get it, I’m sure most of you do. Anyway, the words are in almost every episode of the season.

The first part takes the Doctor, Rose, and Captain Jack to Satellite 5 again, but way in the future even from the last time they were there. The Doctor awakens in a futuristic version of Big Brother, Rose in The Weakest Link run by an Anne-droid which kills the losers, and Capt. Jack in What Not to Wear with robo-clothiers. It turns out, though, that all of this had been a cover by the Daleks, who have kidnapped Rose as a way to keep the Doctor from interfering in their invasion scheme. The Doctor says he’s going to save her and wipe them out. Like a boss.

He does end up getting Rose back and realizes the only way out is to blow up the station with him on it. He sends Rose back to her own time in the TARDIS but she’s not prepared to be helpless and go back to her normal life. Even though her mom and Mickey ask her just to stay and be safe, they eventually help to try to get the TARDIS back in working order. She ends up opening the console and absorbing the time vortex energy. She goes to the future and thoroughly disintegrates the Daleks. She even, unknowingly, brings Captain Jack back from Extermination, though he’s got a whole bunch of new problems which we find out about later.

Eventually, the TARDIS energy becomes too powerful for her and she’s going to burn up, so the Doctor, with possibly the cheesiest line in television history, kisses the energy out of her and absorbs it into himself. When Rose awakens in the TARDIS, the Doctor is in pain. The energy was too much for him, too, but he had to do it, and he has a way of cheating death. He says goodbye to Rose before regenerating into the new-teeth-having Tenth Doctor.

The first series of the rebooted Doctor Who certainly had its ups and downs, but largely these were far more up than they were down. Eccleston was a brilliant Doctor who sadly didn’t have a good time doing it. For years after, he wouldn’t even really talk about his experiences on the program. Still, it set up right away the idea that the Doctor can change and that it’s not the end of the show, or indeed the world, when the lead actor changes. We’ll talk more about that next Friday, and will do it again, I’m sure, this Christmas.

]]>http://nerdist.com/doctor-who-a-companions-companion-series-1/feed/3Ghosts of “Doctor Who” Christmases Pasthttp://nerdist.com/ghosts-of-doctor-who-christmases-past/
http://nerdist.com/ghosts-of-doctor-who-christmases-past/#commentsMon, 17 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000http://www.nerdist.com/?p=62410
Since its return in 2005 (how many times I have started an article with that sentence?), Doctor Who and Christmas have gone together like eggs and nogs. Without fail, for the last seven years there has been an episode of Doctor Who on television on December the 25th. Whether the specials themselves were overly “Christmassy” is another matter, but you definitely have to give them credit for consistency in programming. The Time Lord in his TARDIS has become very familiar to scenes of snow and trees with blinking lights. Interestingly, though, Christmas was not a staple of Doctor Who in its original 26-year stint, with one very obvious and weird exception. So, friends, as the days until “The Snowmen” creep ever-closer, let’s take a look at the previous episodes and grade them on how much cheer they spread.

1966 – “The Feast of Steven”
During the show’s third season, with William Hartnell still firmly entrenched as the Doctor, Christmas fell on a Saturday. In the middle of the massive, twelve-episode arc story known as “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” in a break from running away from the evil little bastards, the Doctor and his crew (Steven and Sara) have a nearly-unconnected comedic jaunt in contemporary London. At the end of the episode, as was inexplicably the custom back in those days, the Doctor turns to camera to wish the audience a very merry Christmas. That moment was not, apparently, in the script, but it was in director Douglas Camfield’s plans, so either it appears to have been cooked up by Hartnell, Camfield, or both. Being Christmas, the ratings were about 2 million people less than the average for the storyline, but those who did were treated to maybe the least Doctor Who-ish episode in history. Like all but three of the episodes in the story, “The Feast of Steven” is missing with only stills and fragments of clips left in the archives. A bit of a shame, as the episode sounds totally bonkers.

Believe it or not, that was the one and only time that they allowed an episode of the show to fall on Christmas Day for the rest of the Classic Series, most likely so they wouldn’t have to chance a repeat of the “Feast of Steven” debacle. It’s like the series went out of its way not to acknowledge the holidays, even during the Earthbound UNIT years. Curious.

2005 – “The Christmas Invasion”
This episode brands itself right in the title. It takes place on Christmas and Christmas is in the name. Boom. Seems Russell T. Davies was a huge proponent of the merger of Doctor Who’s brand of science fiction and the Yuletide. The first one of his is easily the most full of holiday spirit and, of course, that makes it terrifying. With the newly-regenerated Doctor stuck in bed, weird things begin occurring, Christmas trees become homicidal, and 1/3 of the population looks like they might kill themselves. So, you know, Christmas. For being the first episode to feature a Doctor, David Tennant sure spends a lot of his time not doing anything. This is really a Rose Tyler and family drama with a bit of human subjugation thrown in for good measure. It gets very dark as it goes on, with Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, willingly destroying a fleeing enemy, and the Doctor then making everyone doubt the woman’s mental and emotional health. That’s not very charitable in either case. Still, it ends with snow (really ash from the exploded Sycorax ship) and some colorful lights and that’s about all it really needed.

2006 – “The Runaway Bride”
In contrast to “The Christmas Invasion,” the following year gave us arguably one of the least Christmassy Christmas specials. First, it was shot in the summer, and that’s pretty obvious all the way through. Second, it follows Donna Noble (before she was really more than an irritating person) as she tries to get back to her wedding. Who gets married on Christmas? Further, who barely mentions that they’re getting married on Christmas? Thirdly, there’s a car chase with the TARDIS as one of the cars. Fourthly, it lets the Doctor get very dark indeed, as he pretty much decides to destroy the last of a species and wants to watch the Empress suffer. Good thing Donna was around to tell him that’s a bad idea. Really the only thing that would signify it as being a Christmas special, aside from the day on which it was broadcast, are the robot Santas and Christmas trees that were seen the year previous. Lance is a phenomenal a-hole, too. It’s a pretty good episode, but not particularly in keeping with the season.

2007 – “Voyage of the Damned”
Slightly more Christmassy, slightly less good. This episode is a science fiction take on The Poseidon Adventure in which the Doctor delivers a number of big speeches and almost nobody gets out alive. The episode does introduce Wilfred, who in this is just a newspaper seller but who turns out to be Donna’s grandpa. Interesting that two consecutive Christmas specials introduce main characters for the following series, but that certainly wasn’t the plan. My real problem with “Voyage of the Damned” is how ridiculously arch the whole thing is. Everything’s pitched at such a high level, it outstays its welcome really fast. Not all bad, but definitely not one of my favorites.

2008 – “The Next Doctor”
The first Christmas special not to be set on contemporary Earth, this one finds the Doctor in Victorian London meeting the Doctor… kind of. The man who would go on to be the Governor on The Walking Dead, David Morrissey, plays a guy with amnesia who believes himself to be the Doctor. There are also Cybermen walking around with things called “Cybershades,” which are sort of like Cyber ape-dogs. The first 20-25 minutes of this one is pretty darn good. It’s got a lot of references to the Doctor’s past (it even shows all 9 previous Doctors onscreen) and the costumes and sets are really cool. It looks VERY Christmassy. The downfall with it is that it becomes incredibly stupid by the end. A giant Cyberman trampling the city? Only a hot air balloon can save the day? DUMB! Such a good premise, so very wasted.

2009 – “The End of Time, Part 1”
Not Christmassy. Pile of garbage. All of it is dumb, except one scene in the diner with Wilf. Hate, hate, hate. I will say no more.

2010 – “A Christmas Carol”
When Steven Moffat took over from RTD, the Christmas specials all were set period, or in a future that looks period. This first one is far and away the best Christmas episode of the lot. In a way only Moffat could, he turns a Charles Dickens classic into a timey-wimey melancholy drama about a mean old man who maybe doesn’t have to be. The look of it is gorgeous and for the first time ever, really, Steampunk makes its way into Doctor Who. Yes, the shark is a bit silly, but it’s a lot less silly than some of the Christmas specials’ features. Also, it’s got Michael Gambon in it, and that is never a bad thing. As much as I hate “The End of Time” is how much I love “A Christmas Carol.”

2011 – “The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”
Upon first watch, this story is a fine, if sappy, episode about a mother and her children, but further viewings bring more of its shortcomings to the surface. There’s really not a whole lot of conflict, the solution is far too simplistic, and the finale is far too blatant a heartstring tug. There’s good stuff to be had, though, especially in the first act: The Doctor playing caretaker and creating a perfect house for children is enough to give you a smile. It’s as good as the ol’ bear and duvet. Nice, if brief and unnecessary, reference to “The Caves of Androzani,” as well.

This year’s special, “The Snowmen,” is again set in Victorian London and will see the first appearance of Jenna-Louise Coleman as Clara, the new companion. There’s also a slew of new and returning characters, plus some titular monsters with nasty, big, pointy teeth. Check back here for my full review of it. I can’t wait; bet you can’t either.